2IS THE PRINCIPLES OF SELF-MASTERY
longer necessary is literally applying the principle of autosuggestion,
undermining his or her own power of Self-Confidence. Such a person
will finally drift into a frame of mind in which he or she will actually
look with contempt upon the person who is forced to carryon.
The human mind, if you will pardon the repetition, may be likened
to an electric battery. It may be positive or negative. Self-Confidence is
the quality with which the mind is recharged and made positive.
Let us apply this line of reasoning to salesmanship and see what
part Self-Confidence plays in this great field of endeavor. One of the
greatest salesmen this country has ever seen was once a clerk in a news-
paper office.
It will be worth your while to analyze the method through which
he gained his title as "the world's leading salesman:'
He was a timid young man with a more or less retiring sort of
nature. He was one of those who believe it best to slip in by the back
door and take a seat at the rear of the stage of life. One evening he heard
a lecture on the subject of this lesson, Self-Confidence, and that lecture
so impressed him that he left the lecture hall with a firm determination
to pull himself out of the rut into which he had drifted.
He went to the business manager of the newspaper, asked for a
position as an advertising salesman, and was put to work on a commis-
sion basis. Everyone in the office expected to see him fail, as this sort of
salesmanship calls for the most positive type of sales ability. He went to
his room and made out a list of certain merchants on whom he intended
to call. One would think that he would naturally have made up his list of
the names of those whom he believed he could sell with the least effort,
but he did nothing oj the sort. He listed only the names of the merchants
on whom other advertising salespeople had called without making a sale.
His list consisted of only twelve names. Before he made a single call
he went to the city park, took out his list of twelve names, and read it
over a hundred times, saying to himself as he did so, "You will purchase
advertising space from me before the end of the month:'